Muffy Davis won 3 golds in handcycling at the London 2012 Paralympic Games
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By any measure, Marianna “Muffy” Davis had achieved a full career of Paralympic accomplishments before ever entering the London 2012 Games.
What Davis has attained following her initial retirement from sport, however, has impressively surpassed her previous successes.
The 41-year-old Davis, an accomplished skier as a youth and a one-time member of the US Developmental Team, was paralysed after a 1989 ski accident crushed her spine during a training run. After graduating from Stanford University in 1995, she returned to skiing as a Paralympian and captured the bronze medal in alpine skiing at the Nagano 1998 Games.
Davis was married in 2004 to Jeff Burley, a recreation therapist for adaptive sports, and the couple’s daughter Elle was born in 2008. The standout skier had officially retired from her sport and didn’t have expectations of returning to the Paralympic Games.
That’s when she began handcycling, simply as a new way to keep in shape, and the competitor in Davis came out once again. She was a gold medallist in cycling at the 2011 World Road Championships in Denmark and also won silver medals in H2 handcycling events at the World Championships.
At London 2012, Davis took home three gold medals, the most golds of any athlete in road cycling and one of only three athletes in the event to earn three total medals. She accounted for three of her home country’s five gold medals in road cycling.
Davis won the individual H1-2 time trial in 31:06.39, more than two seconds faster than her nearest competitor; claimed the individual H1-3 road race in 1:41.34 to lead a one-two finish by the US; and she was part of the gold-medal winning mixed H1-4 team relay with a time of 30:07.00.
